Microsoft Could Bring Windows Hello To Android, iPhone (thurrott.com)

Microsoft may have plans to bring Windows Hello, one of the headline features of Microsoft's current operating system, to Android and iOS. Windows Hello is a feature that lets people unlock their PC with fingerprint, face, or iris. Paul Thurrott reports: With Windows 10 version 1607, Microsoft has expanded the Windows Hello authentication technologies to include support for companion devices. That we knew. But those companion devices, surprisingly, will include both Android and iPhone handsets. The question is whether those solutions will ever be made available to consumers.[...] On a Ignite 2016 session called Expand Windows Hello Family to companion devices and browser, Microsoft outlined some ideas around this. "When you think about a user and the kind of devices they carry with them," Microsoft senior program manager lead Anoosh Saboori said during the session, "they normally have the phone in their pocket, they [might] have some kind of wearable on their arm, some of them might have the security fobs given to them by their company, and many of us carry a badge with us that is used to gain access to different physical locations. We wanted to leverage these devices as a way to knowing the user."

Comments

Missed a few

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlock your PC by fingerprint, face, iris, Microsoft employe, NSA, EU comission and anyone who's willing to pay Microsoft for unlocking.

Translate Jargon to English

[sehlat]

Original: We wanted to leverage these devices as a way to knowing the user.

Translation: We wanted to have more ways to gather data we can sell to advertisers and pass along to the National Surveillance Agency.

try { that }

[hcs_$reboot]

try { new Feature(); } catch (MS) { abort(); }

Could also

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring Death and Destruction. So, you gots to ask yourself, Is it for good or evil? Well, punk!

Not just no

[Anonymous Coward]

but FUCK NO. Never will I install or allow to reside within my iPhone ANY apps that are produced by or connect to microshit or google services.
NEVER. As far as that goes, I don't use apps for the most part. They all exist to suck away the minutia of your soul and life like digital vampires.

I use my iPhone for a, wait for it, a PHONE. When I'm at home I use it to browse the web but it passes through a very, very restrictive pfSense firewall and a VPN.
I have extremely aggressive ad blocking in place so ads never see the light of day on my machines and the parasites can't monetize me by monitoring my browsing thanks to my VPN. When I'm away from home my iPhone is a phone and nothing else. I've disabled data services over cellular and I turn off the WIFI and bluetooth outside of my home. Why? Because FUCK the corporate parasites of the world. FUCK all the invaders of privacy

Re:Not just no

[Anonymous Coward]

...yet you use a phone created by the most intrusive company on the planet. Dumbass.

Re:Not just no

[MightyMartian]

The Jobs Reality Distortion Field is still holding.

Re:Not just no

[Anonymous Coward]

When I'm away from home my iPhone is a phone and nothing else.

A turd is a turd, no matter how much you apply the old duraglit...sorry, couldn't resist that. No, your iphone is still a bloody iphone. You want just a phone?, buy an old 'dumb' phone...

..I've disabled data services over cellular and I turn off the WIFI and bluetooth outside of my home.

Sure you have...just keep telling yourself that...It's somewhat cute that despite the

'..When I'm at home I use it to browse the web but it passes through a very, very restrictive pfSense firewall and a VPN...'

you obviously trust the veracity of the information that your iphone provides on its screen regarding its connectivity status..

'..Why? Because FUCK the corporate parasites of the world. FUCK all the invaders of privacy'

You say that, yet you're owned by an iphone..sleep, obey, consume, this is your god, conform...

The only truly secure way to use an iphone for communication?, burn the fucker and use it to send smoke signals..

Ankle Monitors

[Anonymous Coward]

What about ankle monitors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankle_monitor)? Yes, I live in Yakima, WA, America's favorite penal colony.

More like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Good Bye.

Who the hell wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they can "...unlock their PC with fingerprint, face, or iris...."

Which of course the first thing any sane human would do his best to disable, uninstall, delete. Never mind propagated it to all their other devices.

I'm not happy about MS, or anyone else having my face stashed away for reference. Never mind tracking it all over the place.

Certainly not happy about MS, or anybody, having my finger print, iris scan, etc.

I was really pissed off at having to offer up my finger prints in order to enter the USA recently. Such things used to be demanded only of criminals.

Are we all criminals now?

It's degrading and insulting. Besides being a great way for these guys to track your every move.

I don't understand how most people in the world just lap all this up with out a thought.

Re:Who the hell wants this?

[Kjella]

I was really pissed off at having to offer up my finger prints in order to enter the USA recently. Such things used to be demanded only of criminals. Are we all criminals now? It's degrading and insulting. Besides being a great way for these guys to track your every move.

There's a lot of other times and places I'd complain but a border check at the actual border is not one of them. They're the ones with the most reason to verify that your passport is genuine and that you are in fact the person the passport belongs to. I do find it somewhat naughty that they keep it and don't simply register that the fingerprints have been verified and match, but I suppose they don't have jurisdiction to demand that other countries translate passport numbers to fingerprints later like say after a crime. Internal checkpoints are more totalitarian though, but still they're point checks.

I'd be far more concerned with everything else like cell phones, electronic money, electronic tickets, car plate readers and whatnot that gives area surveillance over time. For example imagine all the interesting data you'd have if you correlated cell phone tower data to see which phones reported pretty much exactly the same, I've heard triangulation can be iffy but say two people in a car driving through a coverage area would enter and leave cells at nearly the same time. Once is a coincidence with the car before or after you, but over time you'd get patterns of who belong together. Particularly if you can pair it with traffic data.

Re:Who the hell wants this?

[ChunderDownunder]

Just finger prints? At some airports I travelled through, they did iris scanning too.

Re:Who the hell wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they can "...unlock their PC with fingerprint, face, or iris...."
Which of course the first thing any sane human..

Sorry, but 'sane human' has been a somewhat oxymoronic phrase for decades...

...would do his best to disable, uninstall, delete. Never mind propagated it to all their other devices.

Good luck in your quest...A strange game, indeed.

I'm not happy about MS, or anyone else having my face stashed away for reference. Never mind tracking it all over the place.
Certainly not happy about MS, or anybody, having my finger print, iris scan, etc.

there was a wonderful bit of doublespeak by one of the companies which run the biometric authenticators and databases that schools use '..we don't store the fingerprints/iris scans but just a hash of them...' as if it's somehow inconceivable that the authorities would be interested in these mere hashes, or would want them for their files on you, or wouldn't have the means to generate hashes using the same algorithms from their databases of known and unknown collected prints/iris patterns and then match them all up..no, the neueweltordnungstazi would never do a thing like that...

I was really pissed off at having to offer up my finger prints in order to enter the USA recently. Such things used to be demanded only of criminals.

You knew the conditions of entry, yet you went...

Are we all criminals now?

Yes..

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.”
Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged

It's degrading and insulting. Besides being a great way for these guys to track your every move.

Yay, you figured out why they're doing it...+1 internets awarded..

I don't understand how most people in the world just lap all this up with out a thought.

s/people/sheeple/g

Hello hell.

[wwalker]

Why would I need Windows Hell on my... Oh, sorry, didn't see the "o" at the end there... (yes, I'm a karma whore)

Re:Hello hell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and shadowban mods, IP addresses are a dime a dozen these days.

I doubt they give a toss about a single poxy comment from some AC nobody. Talk about delusions of grandeur....

Attention Microsoft

[Nunya666]

Please keep your hands off my Android!

Re:Attention Microsoft

[unixisc]

Agree, but would add some more suggestions. How about getting some really useful stuff to their own platform - Windows 10 Mobile? In particular, put in something like FaceTime and Google Duo (no, Skype ain't it), which can communicate w/ iPhone FaceTime or Android Duo users w/o requiring the latter to download the app?

Also, I'd really like them to come up w/ a VOIP app for Windows Mobile - one like Vonage or 8x8.

Re:Attention Microsoft

[ChunderDownunder]

(yeah I know they're the devil and all that, so don't flame me) Personally, I welcome the competition, if it forces Google and Apple to lift their game.

MS apps on my phone: Outlook. Google have had 3 goes at building an email app and they all suck.

Windows Hello?

[Geoffrey.landis]

Windows Hello? But, when do I get my Windows Hello Kitty?

Pennsylvania does it better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP from Lancaster county, amirite?

Hoping for something different...

[Fire_Wraith]

Windows Hello? I was sort of looking more for "Windows Goodbye."

it's ok.

[Anonymous Coward]

google-analytics is more gay than Steve Jobs and more waterproof than Samsung (thanks for the new fiber optic porn link through the Pacific Ocean and underground Hermosa Beach).

Just what we need

[OneHundredAndTen]

Microsoft garbage in our phones. Following a time-honored tradition, consider yourself middle-fingered, Microsoft.

It's just a path to a NSA backdoor...

[squash_me_quickly]

The anti Microsoft feelings in me made me immediately assume ulterior/negative motives :(

ps. just so you all know... autoexec.bat and config.sys made me hate Microsoft a long, long time before I used Linux!

Microsoft patented Android

[khz6955]

Will Microsoft be threatening to sue Microsoft for using its patented technology in Android.

Here's Why Nokia Is About To Get More Money Out Of Its Patents

Headline features

[thegarbz]

What the hell is Hello? And how headline is a feature of the OS that I've never once used despite having the OS in question from day 1?

Re:Headline features

[jrumney]

It's a feature where your PC unlocks when you look at it. But apparently the facial recognition was too good, so now Microsoft want to open a vulnerability where you can unlock a stolen PC by phoning the owner and thus tricking them into looking at their phone. This will bring the feature down to Microsoft's usual level of security.

Re:Headline features

[rtb61]

So if I bend over and point the phone at the other end of my digestive anatomy, will M$ recognise that as they insert digital the probe.

Re: Headline features

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if you have a Tablet PC running Windows 10 it bugs/notifies you to use this. Especially during setup. Maybe for the desktop (or simply installing via upgrade on the desktop) it didn't bring it up.

But either way, I'm sure they would upload a copy of your iris/fingerprint to the cloud for your "convenience" and then who knows what fun things they do with it then. I opt out of this.

No thank you

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

No, no no no. DO. NOT. WANT.

Don't pollute the Android and Apple ecosystems with your user-hostile crap.

I neither want nor need Microsoft to make competing phones worse.

FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Could Bring Windows Hell To Android, iPhone

Re:FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I made the lame, obvious, and already redundant joke. I am deeply ashamed.